Design and then improve the ultimate mothership. Explore a persistent living galaxy populated by 200 unique captains that can do everything you can do. Survive the zombie infection and then fight them back. Make allies and start your own faction. Build your empire. Also includes Sandbox Mode.

User reviews:

Recent:

Mostly Positive
(23 reviews)
- 78% of the 23 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive.

Overall:

Very Positive
(1,200 reviews)
- 82% of the 1,200 user reviews for this game are positive.

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you
should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Important Note: SPAZ 2 is not a direct sequel to SPAZ 1. It is a new game with brand new gameplay mechanics but is set in the same universe with the same cast. SPAZ 2 is themed around scavenging and survival and the mechanics reflect that. Those looking for a direct SPAZ 1 sequel will not find it here. Those looking to try something new, certainly will find that. :)

We have been working on SPAZ 2 full time for almost 5 years. The single player campaign and sandbox modes are working, but we would like community suggestions for the tuning and for methods to improve the campaign flow. SPAZ 2 is built on an emergent living galaxy with 200 persistent captains, and the two of us here at MinMax just cannot explore all the dark corners of a galaxy on our own. In just the first week, we have already implemented many community suggestions that have made the game even better.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We estimate between 6 and 12 months, but we won't mark SPAZ 2 as released until we feel that it is a complete game that we can be proud of. We are excited to see what players think of SPAZ 2 and to hear their ideas for improvements.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“A big focus right now will be doing a better job of teaching the player the many gameplay systems, particularly on the Starmap. So the tutorial content now as well as early progression is definitely in an Early Access state. Some people get it right away, but others struggle and we need to work on that. [Complete]

Right now, the main cast voices are all synthesized. We expect to hire voice acting talent for most of the main cast for final, though if everyone loves the synthesized voices, this may change. [Complete]

Throughout Early Access we will also be working on localization and will attempt to bring the game to Mac and Linux. [Complete]

Achievements and Trading Cards will come on line throughout Early Access.

Tuning, Tuning, Optimization, Tuning.

Stretch goal: VR. We have done a huge amount of multi layer gfx compositing that MAY make double camera rendering impossible now, but we will investigate solutions near the end of Early Access. [Complete]”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“SPAZ 2 already has an ocean of depth and content. The combat mode and starmap mode are fully functional games in their own right, and all the systems are interacting with one another.

There are over 90 ship and station parts as well as over 30 weapons.

There are 200 persistent and unique AI captains.

The AI captains remember, make friends and enemies, join and leave factions and do just about everything the player can. The AI captains already have over 90 relations events that they can monitor on the starmap.

There is a full levelup perk system that is unlimited at the top end.

There is a lore system that bridges the gap between SPAZ 1 and SPAZ 2.

You can join a faction, build your own, or just remain a filthy neutral.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“The price may be increased on release from early access.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“As with SPAZ 1, the community will be a vital part of the completion process for SPAZ 2. We at MinMax do not have a monopoly on good ideas and had a great experience upgrading SPAZ 1 with community ideas and support.

We have maintained and active forum presence over the last two years while SPAZ 2 has been on the coming soon list. As we have brought new features online, we have discussed them with the community and have gotten their input. Some suggestions have even already made it into the game. We have tried to be as open as possible with our ideas and progress and will continue to do so throughout Early Access and beyond.”

Buy Space Pirates and Zombies 2

August 3

This version was all about completing the final deliverables for the 1.0 release. We are so close now. We have had a ton of great input over the last 14 months in Early Access, and we really appreciate you taking this journey with us!

Major additions:

Professional Voice Acting.

Localization to French, German, and Russian.

VR motion controller support for VIVE and OCULUS

Here we go.

Professional Voice Acting:

Hiring professional voice talent was new to us, but in the end we think that we found the perfect voices for each character. In fact, originally we were not going to professionally voice Mac, Skid or the Computer but in the end the quality of the main cast's voice acting was so high that we decided to voice everything because the difference between the professional voice acting and the text to speech was just too glaring.

We now have over 2 HOURS of spoken dialogue in the game between Elsa, Carl, Jamison, Mac, Skid and Janeframe (the Computer) It was surprising how much voice work is actually in the game, over 18000 words.

We originally tried to have the voice work done locally, but it was too short notice for the local studios, so we decided to try to to do it ourselves. We put together detailed character packages and posted on a couple big voice acting sites (Voice123 and CastingCallClub) and what do you know, we got over 300 auditions over the course of a week. We narrowed and narrowed and finally both Richard and I independently came to the exact same picks for the voices (so no arguing there, phew)

After that we interviewed each actor over Skype and answered questions, we finally had a group table read using a 5 way Skype call. It was really incredible to hear the voices of our characters come alive after 8 years of developing them.

Once the table read was done, recording started individually by each voice actor, and they delivered audio files weekly for about a month. And now we have it all compiled together and balanced and in game, ready for you to hear. We hope you love the voices as much as we do.

Note: The old text to speech voices are still in there and are individually selectable via the sound menu for nostalgia sake.

Localization to French, German, and Russian:

This version was also about getting the localization system ready for public consumption. We were contacted by some fans of SPAZ 2 and decided to Localize French, German, and Russian. French and German because they are fairly large sections of our European player base, and Russian was picked because of its large player base and for having an entirely different alphabet from Germanic languages.

Having fans translate the game was a great choice we think. They really understood the feel of the SPAZ universe and sometimes even suggested inside jokes from their own languages to replace our own. All in all it was a great experience and the translators were super dedicated. They translated over 30,000 words type dedicated.

There may be some translation issues or missed spots so please report any mistakes or omissions. Its a lot of words, and things will have been missed/mislabeled. The translators will want to fix them and we want them fixed! :)

Once the localization has settled, we will be releasing custom localization XML files. This will allow player localization to any language. The process we went through with the translators should have knocked off most of the translation rough edges. Long term, we would like to hook up player translations to Steam Workshop, though that probably wouldn't be before 1.0.

For official translations we are going to see how the current translations do sales wise before branching out further. Managing an official translation takes considerable time and a non trivial amount of funds. So for example if the translated versions suddenly explode in sales, it makes doing other languages more attractive. This is all new to us, so we need to see. In any case we will support custom translation by players, so if there is an interest in a particular language, a translation will always be possible.

VR motion controller support:

As a final step to our VR support, we have added motion controls to SPAZ 2 VR. Richard has prepared a video linked here to explain it a bit. Even if you don't have VR, you may be able to get a bit of a sense of how SPAZ 2 feels in VR.

One motion controller is for aiming and ship functions like boosting shields, reloading, and camera controls. The other controller is for movement, switching weapons, and switching ships. It was quite a challenge to get all the SPAZ 2 functions on the few controller buttons, but we managed it by using the grip button as a sort of “shift key.”

Gameplay wise, shooting is definitely my favorite on the motion controls. Lazing targets is just cool. Flight wise there are three modes. Controller relative (point where you want the ship to go), Helmet relative (forward means go toward where you are looking), or Ship relative (pressing left turns you left) Find a mode that is most comfortable to you. Note: VR also allows you to use a regular XInput style controller instead of the motion controls. This behaves the same as on the flat screen.

This version will bring our VR support to completion aside from bugs. Please please give it a try if you can and let us know if you have problems (especially with the motion controls)

Additional Fixes/Changes:

Fixed issue where sometimes the camera could get caught flickering when toggle camera was selected right before pause.

Made AI captains attack Bandit Hives longer so they try to destroy them more vs just raiding them for supplies.

Fixed case where captains would raid bandit hives with bounties instead of trying to destroy them.

Made local governors more likely to clear bandit hives from their territory.

AI captains more likely to complete Starbase building tasks where they have to pay a portion of the cost themselves.

Made the blocked port checker a little more forgiving to allow fitting parts in spots that look like they should allow parts to fit.

Fixed bug where sniper cannons and mass drivers would cause a hitch in the enemy ship's movement when they hit.

Fixed exploit where you could disband a starbase you own to get salavge access to the store inventory which you do not actually own.

Accessing Cheat menu easier for a variety of keyboards: (Left Alt or Right Alt or AltGr) + (F7 or 0)

Starbase bounties are now checked vs the bounty taker's relation with the owner. So friends will no longer attack your bases.

Bounty takers will now take into consideration their relations with the faction leader before taking on a bounty to destroy a starbase (So player friends won't attack the bases in the Player faction, even if the player does not own that base)

Fixed issue where you could contextual target parts in the inventory level, causing Battle Wagon to attack them.

Fixed issue where you could lock onto an ally outside of battlewagon mode, then switch to battlewagon mode and your ship would automatically fire at your ally.

Fixed fighter docking issues on high speed motherships where they couldn't catch up.

Increased Rez drop from zombie Starbases from a flat 200 to 400-1000 based on the size of the base.

Fixed case where you could mark a part for hot swapping in the inventory level then attach it to your ship using the tractor instead, leaving the part in a weird state.

Starbase threat level now properly updates when you level up.

Starbase threat updates when transferred to a new owner to reflect their tech level

Fixed knocked off enemy parts attached to player ship not consuming any capacitor power. In fact, it was stealing the power from the old ship.

When the player rams a ship, the ship being rammed now takes it as a hostile act. Especially so if they are an ally and there are not hostile ships left in the region. Allies now react to being rammed to death for free parts after battles conclude.

Fixed case where after player lost a battle and player continued instead of loading that the winning ships did not recover their strike craft and their health was not updated to the proper post battle health.

Taught Motherships not to avoid Strike Craft and since they will rarely collide due to being at different Y heights. (Also taught strike craft not to avoid motherships)

New AI flight system that attempts to de-clump the ships and keep ships at optimal range with each other. Also smooths out their decision making so they stick with ideas longer and don't criss cross each other so much while re evaluating.

New weapon analyzer that weights damage potential of all equipped weapons and decides the best combat range based on that.

AI ships better at deciding when to boost engines.

When clicking “Fight” on a station, you need to click the button a second time within 3 seconds to prevent accidental fights.

On Easy and Normal difficulties the max stars for AI strike craft are 4 for larges, and 5 for mediums and smalls. Hard and Insane unchanged.

Fix for case where ship parts could not reattach sometimes when they were knocked by enemy captains.

Fixed issue where zombie strike craft spawned from eggs were much higher in Y than regular strike craft.

Going Forward:

With the addition of voice acting, localization, and the completion of VR, our Early Access goals are now complete. We still have a bit of tuning and bug fixing to do, but the codebase is mostly on lockdown now in preparation for 1.0. Even seemingly simple changes sometimes cause nasty bugs, so we have to let the build settle before release.

Once 1.0 releases, we will be spending time on a Mac and Linux port right away. Then we plan to re-open the code base in response to the new player input that “hopefully” floods in.

It has been a really long road for SPAZ 2 (5 years as of September 1) but we are thrilled with the results and the support you all have given us!

June 14

The goal of this update was to sneak in a couple final features before 1.0 code lockdown as well as to get a start on our remaining Early Access goals, voice acting and localization.

We need to get the build as solid as we can for the v1.0 release, so going forward we will be focusing on tuning and bug fixing to ensure a great 1.0 release. After 1.0 we will again be able to look at new features, and we will hopefully see a lot of new faces joining the community with great ideas.

In this update we have added a new 100 territory map “The Clockwork Void,” as well as the “Dark Cycle,” a system of rebounding ever increasing zombie infection for the sandbox mode. Behind the scenes, we have now cast our voice actors and begun localization.

Now for the details!

The Clockwork Void:

We have added a new 100 territory map! Richard and I decided that we needed something between the 53 territory Micro Spiral and the 200 territory Milky Colossus.

We are now using this new 100 territory map as the basis for the story mode.

The original map (now called the Micro Spiral) has had years of testing with the Story, but this new map has had maybe a dozen hours. So there may be issues, please report them if you see them.

It is scary to make a change of this magnitude this late in the project, but from a high level the 100 territory map seems like the best galaxy size for first time players.

For those of you familiar with playing the story mode, a comparison to the old story mode with the smaller map would be great!

The Dark Cycle:

We have added a system of rebounding zombies to the Sandbox Mode. This has been an ongoing request from marathon players, that they want ever increasing challenges. Well the rebounding zombies should fulfill that and then some. Here's how it works...

Under the “Zombe War” section of the Sandbox Tuning menu you can now activate “Rebounding Zombies.”

One important note, we made it so that you can even activate Rebounding Zombies in old sandbox saves, so you don't need to start from scratch to bring the zombie menace back!

Rebound strength is based on the zombie generation. The sliders show how bad the next incoming generation will be. This means the values on the sliders will increase as the generation increases, but you are still able to fine tune how bad each next incoming generation will be (until it arrives)

You are also able to turn off rebounding zombies as long as the dark infection count down has not started for the next round. So, if you are fighting the zombies and need a breather between outbreaks, you can turn off the rebound for a while. It is kind of a “self serve apocalypse.”

Rebound Level Increase:For each zombie generation this is how much higher level the Zombie Alpha will be than you when it arrives. Note, this is multiplied by the current zombie generation. So if 10 levels at generation 1, then 20 levels at generation 2 and 100 levels are generation 10.

Extra Underlings:This dictates how many of the AI controlled captains will instantly become infected on the next outbreak. This is also multiplied by rebound generation.

How this works is that the weakest captains will fall to the new infection. They then have their levels buffed to somewhere between your level and the Alpha's level. So this means there will be a continuum of nasty zombies to fight and the weakest captains from the Galaxy now become highly relevant conflict wise.

In general the weakest captains will be the neutral captains, so the factions will take less of a hit than the neutrals, until you run out of neutrals... Filthy neutrals.

Extra Territory:This is how many territories the zombie outbreak will spread to on a new infection cycle. The territories are picked such that they will try to take empty territory first, but will spread into faction territory if they have to. This is also multiplied by the rebound generation.

Timer Decrease:This is how much shorter the zombie arrival timer will be for the next rebound. So the rebounds can come faster and faster based on the current generation.

Minimum Zombie Time:This sets some minimum time for rebounds, so you don't end up with zombies respawning every 10 seconds (unless you want them to)

Localization Begins:

This month we also made big strides with our localization system. We have hired translators for French, German, and Russian versions of SPAZ 2. It took some time to get the translation pipeline in order, but now the translators are busily localizing the 30,000+ lines of text.

Going forward we hope to release a system that will allow fan translations of SPAZ 2 using a system like Steam Workshop. This current round of official translation is a test bed for that future fan based system. So if someone someday wants a Latin version of SPAZ 2, then they will be able to make one by editing some XML files.

Voice Acting Casting:

Well, 300 voice auditions later we have our Elsa, Carl, and Jamison. 8 years we have worked with these characters and they finally have voices!

Casting was a huge learning experience for us, because in our combined 28 years of video game development experience, we have never directly handled acquiring voice talent. Now that we have the cast, we are excited to put on our director hats :)

We will be keeping the option to use the old Text To Speech version of the cast as well for posterity, but we think that once you hear these voice actors that it will be really hard to go back to TTS. We love you TTS, but these professional voice actors are just so, so... much better.

When ramming, less of the damage is transmitted through the skeleton of the ship so fewer parts will break off that weren't directly impacted by the ram. So your engine won't break off when you ram with your nose anymore.

Lowered the reflected back damage to the rammer when ramming by 20%

Fixed connection helper arrows remaining on when the part being connected is destroyed due to being used to smack other ships.

Made tractored parts less likely to be destroyed when they hit enemy ships while being tractored.

Fixed VR zooming on the starmap when pressing RB with the controller

Added Vertical menu offset slider for VR

Added menu distance slider for VR

Reversed combat zooming in VR mode with the controller

Custom part price multiplier slider for sandbox mode.

Fixed the auto deploy button on the tactics panel so it wouldn't be disabled when a strike craft is currently active.

Fixed controller not being able to advance dialogue in the final mission.

Fixed case where the level set dressing asteroids could get too close to the play area and look like intractable asteroids.

Going Forward:

This next update will be about tuning and bug fixing for v1.0. Schedule permitting, we will also be recording and adding the new voice acting. We also hope to have the French, German, and Russian translations completed.

VR wise, we will be getting the motion controllers working and finalizing as well so it can be tested for hopefully a parallel release with version 1.0.

So we are really really close now. Thank you all so much for taking this 13 month Early Access ride with us!

Reviews

“The combat in this feels very very good you guys. Feels very nice, very fluid.”
Brian Rubin, Space Game Junkie

“Oh Yes, I love the comic relief in the game. Just about everything is oozing with that kind of charm.”
ReformistTM

“MinMax Games has slammed down in front of us the most innovative and exciting experiences I have had the privilege of playing in a long time.”
Deluks Gaming

About This Game

In SPAZ 2 you must survive in an evolving post apocalyptic Galaxy. The zombie threat is defeated, infrastructure has collapsed, fuel is scarce, and scavenging means survival.

Initially the Galaxy contains hundreds of fleets, each trying to survive. AI captains do everything the player can. The player is not special and is not the center of the Galaxy.

As resource scarcity becomes critical, ships come into conflict just to survive. Factions may form for protection or split due to starvation. Old friends must become fodder.

Stronger factions establish and defend territories, set up resource hubs, and establish star bases. Weaker factions may resort to banditry. Each captain is unique, persistent, and shapes the Galaxy.

When factions meet, combat is usually the result. While the strategic side of SPAZ 2 is about exploration, territorial control, and faction building, the action side of SPAZ 2 is about ship construction, tactics, and salvage.

Combat creates damaged ships and dead crew, but it also provides new salvaged parts. All the parts in SPAZ 2 are modular and randomly generated. If you see something you like, break it off an enemy, grab it with your tractor beam, and connect it to your ship. Ship construction can be done live during battles, though sometimes beating an enemy to death with their broken wing is also fun.

Back on the star map, battles will attract other captains looking for salvage. Take your new parts and run. Upgrade, repair, and prepare to fight another day, for darker threats are about to emerge.

Key Features:

Two hundred persistent Captains that are able to do everything the player can, including forming dynamic factions, building structures, controlling territory, and going to War.

A true living galaxy that is not player centric. It will develop differently each game through the interactions of the agents.

Build your own faction from nothing.

Randomly generated modular parts. Build the mothership that suits your play style, on the fly, in seconds. Every part has its own unique stats that contribute to the mothership. Every part has its own hull integrity and damage states. Every part is a real, working, ship component.

Strategic ship building. The mass, location and shape of parts all matter. If a part blocks a turret, it will not fire. If a ship is too long, it will turn slowly. Too many engines will mean too little power for weapons. Every design choice counts.

A fully physics based 3d environment where everything is destructible, takes damage from impacts, can be grabbed and even thrown at enemies with the tractor beam.

Natural movement and controls. Movement is on a 2d plane and screen relative, much like an FPS. The combat feels like huge pirate ships battling on an ocean. Focus on tactical positioning and manage system power to unleash hell at the right moment.